Well, I’ll tell you something,knives are a danger to us all!Never mind their usefulness in kitchens and hunting, and their recreational whittling, did you know how many people are injured and killed by them?

Why, just recently China has had two serious knife assaults, but the lost Malaysian airline story overshadowed it or I am sure the media would have covered it!

In the article it states that “Mass knife attacks are not unprecedented in China. Some occurred in 2010 and 2012, but the attacks happened at schools and didn’t appear to have political connections.” Has video.

Am I kidding about the knives? Yes…sort of, but what’s my point? Well, to begin with,

Guns are not available in China, but people determined to carry out horrible crimes will find a way. They will use knives, cleavers, syringes, hammers, and more, and if those became unavailable, they will find other weapons – rocks, 2×4’s, cars, branches, agricultural implements, poison, airplanes, IEDs, gasoline, fire, fists, whatever.

Consider just how much violence there was before guns – a lot! Just read history.

We humans are NOT basically good. Sorry to break it to you.“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” – Jeremiah 17:9

Ain’t it the truth, but this is even more damning.“…no one is righteous—not even one. No one is truly wise; no one is seeking God. All have turned away; all have become useless. No one does good, not a single one.Their talk is foul, like the stench from an open grave. Their tongues are filled with lies. Snake venom drips from their lips.Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.They rush to commit murder.Destruction and misery always follow them. They don’t know where to find peace.They have no fear of God at all.”Romans 3:10-18

Sound like any people we know? Or see in the mirror? It genuinely grieves theCreator of All Things because each of us are so very precious to Him. Even children aren’t exempt, but it takes them nearly a decade to be able to realize it and become responsible for that knowledge. Come on, we all know that no one has to teach them to lie, steal toys, hit other kids, fight, disobey…but we do have to teach them to behave well, to be kind and so much more. But as we get older, it just gets worse, and we ache for peace, but the world can’t give it.

The ONLY thing that works is when the human heart is changed from the inside, but we CAN’T change ourselves, or the world would have found that way and things wouldn’t be as awful as they are.Depressing, eh?

The world didn’t start out as a bad place, but a true paradise, which explains why we keep longing for that (now lost) perfect world, and trying to recreate it by our own efforts. When we blame human beings for the state of the world we are partly right, but just haven’t gone back far enough. Even science has finally realized that we all came from one woman, and she, and then her husband, were fooled by the Evil Adversary and made a decision that broke the world and nothing has been right ever since, and just keeps getting worse. Well, at least now you know where to place the ultimate blame, but that doesn’t solve the problem, and there’s no one to sue because they are dead!

But the Creator of All Things made a Plan and A Promise, and wrote it in the stars and in His book. And He told HisStory through his messengers and documented how it was coming about and unfolding. It was a messy road because people are imperfect and evil (and still listen to the Enemy), but the Creator of All Things is neither, and is greater than all our weakness and disobedience, and He is our true Friend, even though we rarely listen to Him.

And when the stage of History was set for theReveal, He (again) divinely created a body, but this time, instead of dirt, started with the egg of a virgin “Daughter of Eve” for His human aspect (redeeming the rebellion of the First Woman, gloriously elevating and honoring all women by showing their irreplaceable role in God’s way of redemption), and by the Divine “touch” of The Spirit made His body male and also Divine (for the Second Adam to redeem the disobedience of the First Man by living as a God-Man in perfect obedience). Then, at that point in HisStory, He temporarily put aside His vast and burning power, might and glory that would be too overpowering for even this special human frame (at this time), and entered His tiny world in His new form, starting His earthly journey as a growing male embryo, then infant male maturing to become a Man – THE God-Man, the One and only Son, for that is what you call a man born of woman. And the servants of the Most High God celebrated in awe.

Then He lived as the ONLY perfect human that has ever walked the earth, claiming to equality with God, doing miracle upon miracle, bringing dead people to life, accepting praise and worship without demurring or correction, telling His followers that He was the only way to heaven, and generally saying things that caused the Jewish leaders to cry out “blasphemy!” and seek to have Him killed. In fact, that’s what happened, and the gentiles were in on it, too, but HE LET THEM, and then forgave their ignorance and evil intentions. Yes, “they nailed Him to the cross and they laid Him in the ground, but they should have known you can’t keep a good man down.”

It was ugly, grisly, ghastly, horrible, stomach-turning and shameful, and NO movie, NO picture or painting, and NO sculpture has EVER captured the horror of how badly He was beaten, tortured and mutilated – for YOU. Now if He had just stayed in that stone tomb like every other dead person up until that day, that would have been the end of it, but He didn’t, which is what you would expect of a God-Man. All the Romans and Jews had to do to disprove His resurrection was to produce His body, but they couldn’t because He was using it, and He was all over the region for 40 days being seen by hundreds of people, and now His body was able to handle His power, so He would do things like…just appear in places, like locked rooms. Better than David Copperfield and Star Trek!

But why did He do it? Because we are NOT PERFECT. Seriously, the Maker of All Things has also made physicallaws like gravity because that’s how the world works, and if we decide to jump out of a tree over rocks we will quickly experience the consequences of our actions. Same with His Commandments, His moral laws – these are not proclamations of a Divine Killjoy, but statements of how we were created to live, and live well and happily. When we violate them, we spit in the face of the Onewho made us, and hurt ourselves and others (sometimes quickly, sometimes more slowly), and that is called SIN. *gasp*

Have you ever used “God,” or “Jesus” as a swear word, a curse, an exclamation of anger? That’s called blasphemy and it’s very serious because He made you and cares deeply for you. Have you ever killed someone? Maybe not (but an aborted fetus was alive-if you look, you see it is human), but Jesus said that if we even hate someone it is the same as murder, making you a murderer. Have you ever stolen anything, even as a kid? Someone’s toys? Candy? Office supplies? That makes you a thief. Have you ever cheated on your spouse or looked on someone with lust? Jesus said even looking on someone with lust is the same as adultery, so you become an adulterer. Have we ever said things about people that are not true? That’s lying, making us liars. And that’s only a few of the commandments, and he says even breaking one is enough to get us cast out.

God is totally perfect and can’t tolerate anything imperfect in His presence because His infinite power and holiness would naturally burn it up (like a supernova, only much vaster) and any impurities in us would be destroyed, along with us! He doesn’t want that, so Jesus took that punishment, because only HE was sinless and could bear it – but it still was terrible suffering and pain He experience for us.

Think of it this way – sin is like black powder mixed all through our being, and in the presence of the unimaginable Power of the Almighty One we’d be utterly undone. However, no black powder of sin was in the God-Man, yet He willingly took OUR sin onto Himself; that’s how important we are to Him. He suffered terribly because He was human, but as the Divine Man, it couldn’t destroy Him, and He rose to life again to prove it.

We could never get the sin out of ourselves (in us forever without Him), so now we can thank Him for taking the horrible punishment we would otherwise face, but it’s a GIFT, not because deserve it (we don’t) and something we can never pay for. Get it? But thisGift, like all gifts, must be received. It doesn’t do any good if we leave it unopened saying we don’t want it, we’re not good enough or (even worse) we can “earn” it by being “good enough” – Seriously?!?

Suppose a friend wanted to give you a Bugatti (not because you are good or kind or worthy, just because he’s your friend and he can), would you say “No, I want to earn it?” Oooh, what a slap to your friend! Such foolishness and arrogance and disrespect to think we must, or even can! How would YOU feel in His place? Give it some thought. A lot of it. He can and will forgive ANYTHING if you are sincerely sorry – He actually reads your mind! He will help clean you up, not expect you to do that impossible task yourself. Why feel miserable any longer?